Mobile phones have evolved in recent years to the point where they now have a broad range of capabilities. They are capable of placing and receiving mobile phone calls, send and receiving text messages, multimedia messages, and emails, accessing the Internet, and providing positioning services via GPS. These devices typically include sophisticated processors, key or touch pad based data entry systems, and color displays. To keep mobile devices compact, touch screen input systems or specially configured keypads are used. For example, some devices use virtual keyboards that are presented on a device display as needed, and data entry is based on touch inputs to the display screen. Other devices use reduced sized versions or adaptations of full size keyboards, while still other devices use a mapping of numeric keys (either real or virtual) into alphabetic characters based on multiple keypresses. While users have become adept at data entry in these ways, data entry for the complex range of applications available to the mobile device user remains difficult, especially for new users, and improvements are needed.